


Gathering fuel in vacant lots

by Mellaithwen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Birthday Sex, Captain America: Civil War Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Photography, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reconciliation, Team Hug It Out, happy birthday steve, photography porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 15:30:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7393138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>Post-Captain America: Civil War</b>
</p><p>Tony decides to reach out to Steve on his birthday and return something that belongs to him. Steve ends up doing the same.<br/>(It's not the Shield)</p><p><i>There’s a community darkroom in Bushwick that by some miracle, isn’t closed for the holiday...</i><br/>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gathering fuel in vacant lots

**Author's Note:**

> posting now because even though it's 03;00am here, it's still Steve's birthday in the US!
> 
> the title and excerpt below are from TS Eliot's Preludes

_…_

  


_I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.  — T.S. Eliot_

  


…

  
  
  


It starts with a letter, and it's not the one that Steve wrote to Tony from Wakanda. No.

 

Instead, it’s the reply that Tony ends up sending months later. The one that arrives at the apartment in Brooklyn Heights that Steve and Bucky have been living in for six months—unbeknownst to the US government or the Avengers.

 

Or so they had thought.

 

“We have mail?” Bucky asks, frowning when they get back home from their morning run. He rolls his shoulders as he stretches, and massages the mess of scar tissue at the joint where his skin meets the new vibranium arm that he’s still getting used to. “We never get mail. _Sam_ doesn’t even send us mail.”

 

“Hand-delivered, too.” Steve remarks, pointing out the lack of stamp or postmark. The envelope is addressed to ‘The King of Wakanda (and the friends that he keeps)’ but the birthday card inside says ‘Steve’ and there’s a small bundle there too. It’s wrapped up tight with red and gold ribbon, and it’s fairly obvious who it’s from.

 

Bucky’s still standing in the doorway at the top of their stoop. His whole body seems to shift, and he’s looking up and down the street like he expects a black ops team to jump out of the shadows and disappear them for good at any second.

 

“Hey,” Steve says calmly, telegraphing his movements as he makes his way back to Bucky. “If Tony was gonna come after us he wouldn’t play games.” He says, to try and alleviate the tension radiating out of Bucky’s every pore, to ease the rigidity of his partner’s stance. “Come on, just come inside.”

 

Every step seems to take an age, but it’s not until they’re back inside, and the door is firmly shut that Bucky lets his shoulders slump. He looks exhausted all of a sudden, and Steve doesn’t get in his way when he makes a beeline for the couch, lying face first with his head pressed up against the pillows.

 

Steve decides to stay close by incase he’s needed, and so he takes a seat on the floor near Bucky’s head, leans his back up against the sofa, and opens his card.

 

The American flag is flying on the front, billowing a little in the illustration, and underneath, it says Happy Fourth of July America! in a slightly garish font, against a backdrop of fireworks.

 

The note inside is understandably brisk but surprisingly devoid of anger.

 

 _Happy Birthday_ , Tony writes in an obnoxiously large script to begin with, before reverting back to a more appropriate size a moment later.

 

He asks how they are, but he doesn’t name names, and he gives Steve snippets of information on the page in return. Little notes that put Steve’s heart at rest. Tony says that it was Pepper who finally convinced him to send the card, and that lets him know at least that not all of Tony’s bridges were burnt for good.

 

He gives him quick updates on the rest of the team, as though he isn’t well-aware that Nat regularly drops by, and he makes a handful of jokes about Steve’s age and his numerous dispositions.

 

Sharon, he writes, is doing fine and with no proof of her colluding with the enemy (because she’s just that good) no arrests could be made. While it’s true that she’s getting some of the more shittier assignments from her CIA handlers to test her loyalties, she’s more than strong enough to make it through.

 

_But since she’s busy, and out of radio contact, the task of sorting Peggy Carter’s more...sensitive belongings— shall we say? has fallen to me._

 

Steve takes a deep breath.

 

 _I was at the funeral_ , Tony writes, the paper littered with hesitation marks, _I stayed at the back. She would have...you know what, she would have hated it, because it was pomp and circumstance and all those flowers? ….But she deserved the ceremony of it all, and she’d understand that, eventually, good ol’ Aunt Peg. Hey, did you know her grandson went to MIT? Smart as hell. It’s scary, really. He acts just like her…._

 

The next few lines have been scribbled over, and there’s plenty of false-starts and crossed out words, but finally Tony says; _I don’t know why I kept this for as long as I did. Most of her things were pretty easy to sort through. Family stuff obviously got sent on, and her filing was so meticulous that any state secrets were easy to sort out too. But this didn’t fit, and I knew that, and I knew it was yours._

 

_And I think, a part of me thought if I held onto it, then you’d have to come see me eventually. That we’d have to talk. Or something. I don’t know. Shut up. I think a part of me wanted to be cruel as well. Wanted to punish you._

 

_But that wasn’t fair, and it’s not as if I gave any indication of wanting to talk after the last time we saw each other._

 

_So consider this birthday gift to be my olive branch to you (and yours)_

 

_See you around Rogers._

 

The bundle is infact a small cigar box, with three film canisters sitting inside. Each roughly the size of a roll of quarters, they are wrapped in white cloth, and bound with medical tape—labelled with Steve’s initials of SGR that’s been scrawled messily in a faded black ink. One of them says 1943, while the other two say 1944. They are completely undisturbed. The tape is as sealed now as it was when Steve first wrapped them up before the War was over, and so that way they have remained.

 

“You okay?” Bucky asks, his voice still muffled by the pillows his face is smushed into. He cards his fingers through Steve’s hair without looking, and the repetitive motion does wonders for keeping Steve’s heart from beating out of his chest.

 

Steve nods, a little numbly, before letting out a choked, _yeah,_ in response.

 

Bucky tilts his head to one side, and he looks at the box with a mixture of concern and curiosity because the birthday present has rendered his boyfriend mute and that’s very rarely a good sign. Even when rendered speechless, post-coital Steve makes more noise than this.

 

“You gonna get them developed?” Bucky asks, recognising the canisters for what they are.

 

“Yeah,” Steve replies, eventually finding his voice, as he unfurls his crossed legs from up off of the floor, and goes to grab his coat. He rubs his hand along the back of Bucky’s neck in a tender gesture, and kisses his forehead before he leaves. “I guess I’ve waited long enough.”

  


…

  


There’s a community darkroom in Bushwick that by some miracle, isn’t closed for the holiday.

 

The student at the desk is nonplussed by Steve’s presence to say the least, with his small laptop propped up on his bent knees, and a camera, half in the process of being disassembled on his desk. Steve gets waved through to the darkroom area, where he finds himself completely alone in the studio, and he supposes that everyone else is out celebrating the national holiday.

 

Once he’s ready, with his film and tools and reels all laid out carefully on the small table in front of him, he pulls the door to a close. He lets the latch click, and the room is plunged into complete and utter darkness.

 

He closes his eyes to stop his pupils from overcompensating or straining to find a light source in the black, and slips into old habits. He breathes in the familiar scent of developer, stop and fix—and boy they haven’t changed a bit—and gets to work.

 

Feeling along the side of the film canisters, he flicks the top off of the one end, and works to get the negative loose. Once it’s freed, he threads the film onto the spool and slowly starts to twist either side of the reel to wind the film forward. It shifts carefully into place and in the darkness, Steve listens out for any cracks of the film getting caught. There are none, and once the remains of the film container have fallen away, Steve carefully loads the negative reel into the plastic tank.

 

He repeats the process for the other two remaining films, before pushing them down onto the centre column inside of the lightproof developing tank. He secures the two sectioned-lid, sweeps his rubbish over to the corner of the table to clear up later, and steps out of the pitch black and into the light.

 

The chemicals are all lined up ready, and he starts the somewhat monotonous process of mixing and pouring. He cleans and agitates the films with developer, fix and water at various stages of the process, and it’s only when the stopwatch on the desk starts to beep that he actually lets himself get excited. He imagines how the images might start to bloom on the negative as he tries to remember exactly what it was he had photographed. With the excess chemicals swirling down into the pipes, and the washing complete, Steve carefully unwinds the film spools and takes his first look. Already, he can see familiar faces staring back at him. Some of them are wounded from light leaks and the wearing away of the negative from age, but others are pristine. He carefully cuts the film into strips and hangs them up to drip dry over the large sink.

 

The film from 1943 is mostly a bust. There’s a church with a huge steeple reaching up to the sky. A shoe, discarded. A dog, moving too quickly for the camera to focus. Steve thinks he can see what might have been a french village—but he can’t be certain—there’s a mist over the frames, the degradation of the negatives over time. The last four visible images overlap, the occupants of each frame travelling between worlds. The bright lights of the pavilions at World’s Fair marr the stark, bombed out landscape of the European front, while the rest of the reel is just blank.

 

The other two films, fare a little better.

 

Dugan tips his hat to the camera while beside him Dernier’s face is a blur. There’s a sorry looking snowman hunched over like it’s dying, and a scarecrow standing sentry in the middle of a field with three crows perched on his shoulders. There’s a picture of Bucky, with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth and his arms are in mid-air gesturing to Steve, with his eyebrows raised, animatedly.

 

There’s a patch of white over one frame, and that same light is leaking onto the three frames that follow behind—leaving a white mist to ghost over the images. Falsworth, with his cap perched on his head at an angle. A railtrack with no trains. A portrait of Gabe wearing round glasses that don’t belong to him, and posing with his arms crossed, in nothing but a white vest and shorts. There is a small pile of sweets scattered besides a revolver—small, plump baby shaped jellies that had been sent to the Commando’s as a rare-gift.

 

In another frame, Morita is sunbathing in the grass, with a faint trail of smoke twisting upwards away from the cigarette that’s perched on his bottom lip. In another, Bucky is driving a truck through the countryside, and his mouth is open, mid-sentence. The next picture is the scowl he gave Steve when he heard the tell-tale click of the shutter being released. In another, there are soldiers sitting on the side of the road. There is a river. There is a flower. There is a stranger standing with his little boy. Their hands are in the air—they are waving goodbye.

 

There is a picture of the Commandos walking up ahead, with their backs to Steve as they make their way through the tall grass. Their shoulders are hunched, and their hands are each holding their weapons, at the ready. There’s something to be said about dirty, bloody soldiers walking through a field of wild-flowers. Like one of those mind games, _what’s wrong with this picture? What do you see?_

 

Steve leans over the sink, gripping the edge in his fists and taking a deep breath.

 

There's a photograph of Peggy with her lips pursed. Her gaze is sharp and piercing but her eyes are soft. There's a picture of Howard talking to a desk clerk whose name Steve never knew. There is a bed, with wrinkled sheets. There is a hand gripping at a thigh—fingers pinching at skin so hard that the indentations in the flesh there create sharp shadows on the film. There is the curve of a man’s jaw. His collar bone. His fingers, reaching down towards his crotch. There is a picture of his legs outstretched and his toes curled and in another shot his eyes are closed, but his teeth are worrying at his bottom lip, and his head is tilted back in an obvious moment of pleasure.

 

Steve spins around when he realises exactly what he’s looking at, and he lets out a sigh of relief to see that he is still, blessedly alone in the studio area.

 

He wills the negatives to dry faster all the same.

  


…

  
  


On his way out, Steve grabs an envelope from the student at the front desk and sends a text to a burner phone, with a time and a location and the simple request of _please come_ , attached to the end of the message. He then heads off into the subway to get the L train bound for 8th Avenue.

 

He gets off at Union Square, glad of the anonymity his beard and slightly longer hair affords him now. He walks the rest of the way to Grand Central Station, clutching at the brown envelope in his hand to ensure that not even the wind can take it away from him.

  


...

  


Steve’s sitting on a bench in the concourse of the station, facing the corridor to the other platforms, as he has been for over forty minutes, when he hears someone take a seat directly behind him.

 

He discreetly pulls down on his baseball cap, shifting a little in his seat. Steve could run, and he knows they wouldn’t ever be able to catch him. He could…but…he has a responsibility to make things right. An olive branch was extended to him, so it’s only fair that Steve repay the favour.

 

“Nice cap, Cap.” the person says by way of a greeting, and Steve lets a small smile loose.

 

“Thank you for coming, Tony.”

 

Stark shrugs in his seat. “Well, you know, I was in the neighbourhood. And, I guess you got my gift?” Tony says, to which Steve nods.

 

“Thank you, Tony. I really mean that. There were a lot of good memories in those negatives.”

 

“You developed them all already?” Tony laughs. “I guess venturing over to Brooklyn at the crack of dawn was worth it then.”

 

Steve doesn’t bother asking how Tony knew where they lived, because short of moving, there’s nothing Steve can do to change that either. So instead he decides to focus on the task at hand. He shifts in his seat, turning around to face Tony, only to find that Tony’s already mirroring his stance, and facing Steve.

 

“You should have…” Steve starts to say, before stopping abruptly and changing tac. “I _wanted_ you to have…This belongs to you.” Steve finally settles on, handing the small brown envelope over to Tony, and watching him intently as he opens it up, and pulls the print out.

 

It’s a photograph of Howard at work in the SSR base in London, and in it, he’s showing the single-mindedness that he became renowned for, in both a good way and bad. The monochrome image shows the young inventor holding a small soldering torch in his hands. His goggles are pushed up onto his forehead, and he’s squinting at his work on the desk. The only light in the picture comes from the desk lamp that Howard’s crouched under, and the small torch in his hands, and both of them cast long dark shadows under his eyes and nose.

 

Staring through the viewfinder of the enlarger, Steve had willed the image of Howard’s death out of his mind, and as he had focused on finding the grain he had pretended not to hear Howard’s last words, muttering Bucky’s name in horror.

 

But watching Tony’s face now, as he stares at the photograph, makes it all worthwhile.

 

“Wow, what’s this? A Steve Rogers original?” Tony jokes, not unkindly, and Steve decides to jump straight in. It always was the best tactic wherever Tony was concerned.

 

“I’m sorry.” Steve says, his voice measured and low. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, and I’m sorry that you found out the way that you did and I’m sorry you had to lose them in the first place.”

 

He breathes deep, in through his nose and out through his mouth.

 

“I can’t undo what happened. I can’t bring them back, and neither can Bucky—” It’s risky, saying his name, Steve knows, but he also knows that he can’t dance around this forever. It’s not in his nature and it’s certainly not in Tony’s either. “—and _I’m sorry_ , Tony.”

 

“I can’t believe you.” Tony says and Steve feels his heart sink.

 

“I can’t believe you’re that guy,” Tony continues. “It’s _your_ birthday and you’re giving _me_ a gift. I mean, seriously? How are you even real? Do you not get how this birthday thing works?”

 

And Steve realises then that it’s not anger that Tony’s throwing his way at all, but it’s something else entirely. It’s something close to exasperation, maybe, but it’s also more than a little fond as well.

 

“And while we’re in the business of saying sorry. I…” Steve can see Tony’s adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I am. Sorry, I mean. I was angry. I think I still am a little, maybe still a lot, but I never should have...lost control like that. So, I’m sorry. And I’m working on it. The anger, that is. And the guilt and the blame and my therapist really has her job cut out for her, I’ll tell you that much.”

 

“That’s good, that’s really good, Tony.” Steve says, because it’s true, and they slip into a comfortable silence as evening commuters and tourists rush by in a blur. The quiet helps the foundations set, and once that’s done with, they can work to rebuild their friendship from there.

 

So they both watch quietly as a group of teenagers run by, two of them are carrying the american flag like it’s a cape. The others are dragging coolers and grocery bags, and Steve would bet any money they’ve got a bunch of sparklers in their backpacks too, no doubt.

 

Steve might even crack open a few of his own later on. It is his birthday after all.

 

“So where does this leave us?” Steve asks after a little time has passed, because he’s back to living in New York City with Bucky in tow, and even though they can do that now with T’Challa’s help, Steve doesn’t want to if it’s going to cause more grief in the long run.

 

“I guess, you go back to your life of domestic bliss and I’ll head on back to mine,” Tony replies, with a shrug, but his eyes are sincere as he continues. “And maybe the next time the world’s ending, we’ll hit the bad guys instead of each other. How does that sound? Deal?”

 

Steve nods, trying to not smile too wide and ruin the moment, because it’s more than he ever could have hoped for. “That sounds great, Tony.”

 

The air between them has changed, that much is clear, and Steve feels like there should be so much more that he still needs to say but he doesn’t know where to start and Tony appears to sense that much too.

 

“Get out of here.” He says, shooing him away like a fly. “Go on, _get._ Don’t you have a birthday to celebrate? Or do you need me to walk you to your train, old-timer?”

 

“Nah, I think I got it.” Steve says, getting up to leave. He turns back around, shuffling his feet a little as he does so. “I’ll see you around, Tony.”

 

“Yeah, I’ll see you around.”

 

And to both of their ears, it sounds exactly like the iron-clad promise that it is.

  


…

  


When Steve gets home, it’s still light out, but almost all of their neighbours are leaving their homes in droves to head over to the bridge to watch the fireworks over the water. Steve predicts that in about an hour the skies will be loud with fireworks but they’ll have the whole street to themselves.

 

When he opens the front door, the apartment smells like baked goods, and there’s an open packet of candles on the table. His birthday card from Tony has been put up on the mantel, and there’s a box in the kitchen, next to a birthday cake, and it’s wrapped in brown paper and tied up with white string.

 

Steve smiles, putting his remaining prints down and unwrapping his gift with something close to glee.  When the last of the paper falls away, he opens the box to find an old camera inside. He unfolds the latch, and gently pulls the small door open to reveal the hinged-lens that’s attached. Just as it’s free from it’s case, warm arms wrap around his middle from behind and Bucky sidles up next to him, propping his chin into the gap between Steve’s neck and shoulders.

 

“I know it’s not as nice as your old one.” Bucky says, rubbing his thumb over a patch of dust caught between the camera’s bellows. “But the kid at the store said it definitely still works, and it takes 120 film, and he had a bunch of that too, and I know you’ve got your phone to take pictures, but I figured—”

 

Steve interrupts Bucky’s train of thought with a soft kiss.

 

“Thank you.” He says gratefully. “It’s perfect.”

 

Bucky’s cheeks go red and to distract from the blush, he picks up Steve’s black and white photographs.

 

“How’d they turn out?” Bucky asks, flicking through the prints with care, before coming across the more intimate shots from the contact sheet and stopping suddenly, licking his lips and clearing his throat. “Is this what I think it is?” He asks, with a complicated look on his face.

 

Steve nods.

 

“I thought you got rid of them.” Bucky sounds a little breathless now, staring at the black and white image of himself, mid-orgasm, and Steve shakes his head.

 

“I couldn’t do it. I knew what they meant and the shitstorm that would’ve followed if anyone had seen them but I just...I couldn’t. They meant too much to me.”

 

_To us._

 

Steve doesn’t mention that the film had become so much more precious after Bucky’s fall. _I’ll never have this again._

He'd thought to himself at the time, caught in a fog of grief. He doesn’t go into the details of how he’d crept over to Peggy’s quarters a few nights before their last planned attack, and entrusted her with the small box of film, as if he were handing her a chunk of his soul for her safekeeping.

 

“Come on,” he says instead, grabbing Bucky’s hand and leading him out of the kitchen.

 

“Where are we going?” Bucky asks, their hands still entwined as he trails after Steve towards the bedroom.

 

“To make new memories.” Steve smirks, gesturing to his new birthday present, and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Bucky’s fairly certain Steve wore the same expression the last time they did this too.

 

“Oh yeah?” Bucky smirks. “Well if that’s the case, I think we’re gonna need more film!”

  
  
  


\--fin

 

 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> in a universe where the Avengers tower stands instead of the Metlife building, there are also benches in Grand Central Station. shhh.
> 
> The communal darkroom in Bushwick [is real](http://www.bushwickcommunitydarkroom.com/)
> 
> And [this](http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Kershaw_Eight-20_Penguin) is the camera Bucky got Steve, because it's currently sitting on my bookshelf.
> 
> come say hello on [tumblr](http://mellaithwen.tumblr.com/)


End file.
